Commentary on vSphere4: call a spade a spade, and a cloud… virtualization

The tech industry is full of jargon junkies. We invent acronyms, come up with complex-sounding terms that are little more than airbrushed revamps of existing concepts. Scarcely had the latest “in” buzzword exited the scene gracefully, we then rush to foist the industry with yet another acronym that essentially means the same thing.

Utility computing? Nope, not in vogue any more. On demand software? Not as sexy as the acronym SaaS (service as a software), retired. The current iteration and poster child is cloud computing, in which all your IT problems are automagically solved by pulling “stuff” out of the cloud.

Major rant: if I hear one more “out of the cloud” reference tossed about casually I’m going to flip. If you mean services over the internet, please say so lah!

Now, cloud computing is an ok and even useful term, if you strictly define what it means. To this cantankerous curmudgeon, as I understand it, it is:

• an external platform of some sort, often hosted by a third party provider
• provides some sort of software as a service (SaaS) over the Internet
• purchase of said SaaS is likely by usage or subscription rather than in a licensing model

The problem is, popular jargon tends to be abused out of all context, which neuters the value of coining the buzzword in the first place.

Take for example VMWare, who invited me for their launch of their VSphere4 yesterday.

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